Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Malloy Inc. was founded in 1960. As a major book manufacturer, its primary business is printing the text, printing the covers and binding books. Their work is 100 percent book affiliated, with one-third of the work focused on school books and the other two-thirds as a mixture of books for the general public, or trade books, which are comprised of fiction, non-fiction, reference and higher education genres.

Business owners Bill Upton, Company President and Joe Upton, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, divulge the components that make their book printing business a success.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

“We’ve had a continuous improvement program going on since the mid-eighties and it comprises a lot of different things,” says Bill. “We’re constantly trying to improve our systems.

“About 25 years ago, we began to follow the approach of W. Edwards Deming,” Joe adds. “Deming had a great influence on Japanese manufacturers regarding their continuous process improvement efforts.”

A key component of Deming’s approach is for organizations to focus their attention on the inputs to their process in order for the output to be exceptional. Instead of trying to inspect every book that comes off the binder, Malloy makes sure that all the steps up to and including binding are done properly so that every book they make looks the way it should.

An improvement program that Malloy added in recent years is 5S. The Five S’s are sorting, setting, shining, standardizing and sustaining. Sorting – getting rid of items that aren’t needed; setting – creating a place for everything and putting everything in its place; shining – keeping the work area very clean; standardizing – creating standard processes and making sure everyone knows what their roles are; sustaining – keeping it up, continuing to do it and refining it. “5S helps us be more productive,” says Bill. “People know what they need to do and where to find the things needed to get it done. It’s pretty simple.”

TECHNOLOGY

“We pride ourselves on being fairly innovative for a relatively small manufacturer,” says Joe. In terms of hardware, in 1982 Malloy was the first book printer in the United States to buy a Timsons press. Timsons has gone on to become the most popular press in the industry.

Malloy was also one of the very first commercial printers to employ computer-to-plate technology. “Twenty years ago, plates were imaged from film,” Joe explains, “We were one of the first to go computer-to-plate, and now everyone does that.”

Here’s how the process is broken down: a publisher sends Malloy PDF files of their book. Laser imaging devices use those files to image printing plates. The plates are mounted on printing presses where they transfer ink to paper. (Pages are printed in sections, rather than one at a time.) In the bindery, the book sections are collated and bound to a cover.

Malloy worked closely with Burgess Industries to develop a system that automated the plate-making process, while it also dramatically reduced the incidence of scratching and handling damage. Says Bill, “Burgess allowed us to provide a lot of input in the design of the equipment, and together we developed a state-of-the-art process.”

“We’ve also made tremendous improvements in terms of our scheduling system, which is really all software and process driven,” says Joe. “Our people have put in years of effort to refine our scheduling system. Our ability to guarantee a schedule, and routinely provide our customers with reliable schedules, is the result of a lot of hard work. For those customers that request it, and can meet the necessary commitments on their end, we can guarantee a schedule, meaning that if we don’t deliver on time, the books are free. As far as we know, we’re unique in our industry in offering that kind of commitment”

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Malloy’s strength and competitive advantage over the years has been attributed to its customer service.

“We have eight customer service reps at Malloy, and they’ve been here an average of over 30 years,” says Joe. “These are people that really know the business and our customers like working with us because they deal with a person who is knowledgeable and empowered to make decisions in the customers’ best interests.”

Malloy is applying that same concept to its online world where customers can work with the Company online and gain the same kind of reliability and dependable service that they’ve experienced in the past dealing directly with a person.

“We’re not forcing people to go online, but we’re trying to make it so attractive and easy that that’s their preferred mode of dealing with us,” Joe adds. “We’re maintaining our core competency in our competitive advantage on a service level and taking it to an online platform.”

Malloy’s goal is to automate transactions, allowing a customer to go online, get an estimate, place an order and follow the schedule of the job, which typically takes about 10-12 working days to complete.

“They can track that job, they can track the shipment when it goes out and they can do this all online without having to depend on a human being on our end to get the answers to their questions,” Joe concludes. “The service reps will still be here to help them, when that is what the customer needs or wants. But, they’ll also be able to get things done quickly, easily, and effectively online.”

FUTURE

“Today, we do 8,000 individual jobs for about 500 customers a year, and the number of copies of each book printed averages 4,000 per job,” Joe explains. “Over the next 5 years, we expect those numbers to change dramatically. In order to grow our revenue, we’ll need to do many more jobs, for many more customers, because the number of copies printed per job will drop considerably.”

In large part, these anticipated changes reflect what is going on in the mainstream publishing industry. But, Malloy is also garnering opportunities with self-publishers that vary from somebody who wrote a family genealogy to a business school professor that has written a book associated with his or her consulting work. These people have the option to go directly to Malloy to print the few dozen or few hundred copies they need, which they can then pass along to their family or sell through their own web site.

“They need a reliable printer because they don’t have a lot of time to figure out the printing business,” Joe adds. “We’ve seen more and more opportunities like that with the small self-publishers who only need small quantities of maybe one title to two titles in their lifetime.”

“Our industry is changing”, concludes Bill Upton. “But, with our ability to innovate, and the relationships we have with our key partners, we feel we’re in a strong position to take advantage of those changes to thrive in the future.”